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Reviewed by:
  • Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948
  • Neil Caplan (bio)
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948, by Hillel Cohen. Translated by Haim Watzman. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2008. viii + 268 pages. Notes to p. 315. Bibl. and index to p. 344. $45.

In this problematically titled work, Hillel Cohen undertakes the ambitious and difficult task of examining what some might call the "underside" of the Palestinian-Zionist relations as the Arab community unsuccessfully attempted to resist the advances of the Zionist movement during the period of the British Mandate. Readers will soon discover, however, that this work is neither a moralizing exposé of venal and corrupt individuals who sold their birthright for a mess of potage, nor a patronizing and dismissive account of the fragmentation afflicting the Palestinian nationalist movement.

Cohen manages to address his subject with a good balance of empathy and detachment. His research skills are brilliant; with great care, he coherently pieces together important patterns of grassroots behavior from minutiae ferreted out of hitherto untapped Hebrew and Arabic archival sources and first-hand accounts. This achievement is particularly impressive when one takes into account the understandable reluctance of many Zionists and Palestinians to disclose fully and frankly what they were up to, given the dangers of ostracism and violence the latter faced as the price for selling land to Zionists or collaborating with them in fighting against nationalist forces during the 1936-1939 rebellion and the 1947-1949 war.

Cohen focuses on these "collaborationist" activities with due sensitivity to their individual, political, and social contexts. Motives, he explains, were varied and could be grouped into four types: personal gain, communal interest, ideological, or tactical differences with self-described nationalists, and the "ethical humanism" shown by those who valued their Jewish neighbors and abhorred the violence engendered by the nationalist movement (p. 67 and Chap. [End Page 651] 3). Individual day-to-day decisions that led to collaboration are also presented within two broader contexts: the British colonial regime and its promotion of the Zionist project, and the evolution of Palestinian national consciousness.

At crucial points in his exposition, Cohen provides carefully weighed reflections upon the often elastic and elusive meanings of "treason" and "collaboration," both as defined by his protagonists themselves and as analyzed by contemporary and comparative standards. In the mud-slinging among politicians from all camps, accusations of treason were so liberally dispensed as to devalue the opprobrium attached to the term. Many leading "collaborators" (aka "moderates") rhetorically asked in their writings and conversations: Who are the true patriots seeking the welfare of the Palestinian people and who, by their selfish, careerist, corrupt, or thuggish behavior, are the real traitors? In exposing the complex ways in which these questions were answered, Cohen's presentation echoes, expands, and refines some of the arguments advanced in Nasser Eddin Nashashibi's apologetic and sometimes simplistic biographical study of his famous uncle Ragheb (Jerusalem's Other Voice: Ragheb Nashashibi and Moderation in Palestinian Politics, 1920-1949 [Exeter: Ithaca Press, 1990]).

Those familiar with the standard binary explanations of divisions within Palestinian society — Husaynis (majlisiyyun) versus Nashashibis (mu'aridun), "moderates" versus "extremists," Muslims versus Christians, farmers and laborers versus merchants and professionals, rural versus urban dwellers — will find in Cohen's study a much more sophisticated and complex portrait. Clan, village, and urban leaders were called upon to make life-changing decisions when faced with opportunities to sell lands to Zionists, to provide information to Shai (Hagana intelligence) operatives, or to ally themselves with their Jewish neighbors when faced with security threats from nationalist or rebel fighters.

Cohen's treatment of Zionist efforts to win friends and thwart enemies among the Palestinian population challenges accepted narratives on both the Zionist and Palestinian sides. On the one hand, his first chapter ("Utopia and its Collapse") undermines the naïve assumption of many Jews, and the propagandistic claims frequently made, that most Palestinians welcomed the newcomers but were manipulated into protests and violent opposition, against their own best interests, by a minority of self-seeking "effendis." Cohen, like other researchers before him (this reviewer included), makes it clear that many...

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